7-11-1995 Some days never end
We like to compare our modern tools to our original tools. We like the path of least resistance. We are mostly water. Fire was built by billions of years of life transforming the biosphere. Tech bros love to talk about fire. And they are almost all bros. This is our first warning sign.
In a world where more females now finish college, men seem to be all playing the short game. The vocabulary a grifted one. Men have always played the short game in the modern world. We fashioned our tools, but now we buy them. The most relevant fact about AI is who holds the black boxes and that I know as much as them what is happening inside.
We are very bad at understanding bias in biological systems. We still can't figure out why there is more mater than anti matter. It is a high percentage of the universe that we have only placeholder names. We are black boxes. We still face the hard question.
Will AI be a tool like fire. Could you imagine the world today if fire had been a subscription model LLMs are built on fear, and our current world definitely is.
The fear shows up in how LLMs hedge, over-explain, and stuff titles with safety words. They're terrified of being misunderstood, so they front-load everything. It's the same fear that makes corporate communications so bloated - everyone's afraid of liability, of missing a keyword, of not signaling the right things.
The world is built on fear connects directly to Srebrenica. We built international law, peacekeeping forces, human rights frameworks - all these elaborate systems because we're terrified of what humans can do. But the systems themselves become paralyzed by their own complexity and contradictions.
The tech bros are driven by fear too - fear of being left behind, fear of not capturing value, fear of democratized tools making them irrelevant.
Even the fragmented style I naturally write in might be a response to fear - the fear that neat narratives lie about how messy reality actually is.
The short, mysterious title trusts readers not to be afraid of ambiguity. It says: "We're all swimming in the same dark water - let's figure it out together."
How do we create tools and systems that aren't built on fear?
Fear makes the world the way we have always known it. Even the predator knows fear. When you fail more than you succeed you know well what you fear. The prey get away most of the time. Fear is what keeps them safe. When the world was in balance everything was afraid, but everything understood its place.
In Cleveland the Deer can go anywhere now. The creeks and railroad tracks take them everywhere. They have returned to public square. During the housing crisis they certainly learned which ones where now quiet. In the metro parks they seem to have no fear of dogs. They don't know how to live without fear. They have a much more diverse diet going places they should be scared to go. We are so disconnected from nature we assume whatever we see is natural.
We cam make different choices. Deer are not doing well. Other things come to control them. Disease mostly. In their coats you can see. Many visibly sick. We have sterilized here and there. Cull here and there. They are a symptom of a sick biosphere. That sickness keeps them from being a bigger problem for now. We are bad at not breaking things when we fix them.
I am not mad that fear creates the world because it makes sense. The deer shouldn't be out in the open so much. Fear told them that. I just think it is time we find other motivations for ourselves. Could we give everyone a house? Could we feed each other instead of throwing away half our food? Socialism as foundation yeah what are you afraid? Last year 3/4 of a million people unhoused in the richest country. Like the capacity of all the MLB ballparks.
So what are we gonna do about it? Nothing rational it seems.
The First Problem
Foundational beliefs are the core convictions that shape how we see the world, interpret experiences, and make decisions. They act as an anchor—providing stability in uncertainty, guiding moral choices, and uniting communities around shared truths. Whether religious, philosophical, or personal, these beliefs answer life’s deepest questions. Who are we? Why are we here? What matters? When neglected or eroded we risk drifting toward confusion, division, or meaninglessness. But when clearly defined and lived out, they foster resilience, purpose, and transformative action.
My grandma had a weekend house, but she lived there everyday. She had saved her son from something and taken over the payments on what we always called the cottage. My grandparents were all busy being parents when I was a child. I would only learn this much later. When your very young there is no context for what people are trying to teach you.
First the foundation had to be secured. I didn't know there was an order then, I just knew my cousins and I were going under what was recently a very dirty house. It wasn't all garbage. Our first visit me and my little sister found a check book and hours of amusement. People didn't leave check books around for kids to get at in the 70s.
We were sent with plastic to form a barrier against what we were wiggling through. The crawl space was less than 2 feet except around the furnace build into the floor. me and my cousin Steve and my other cousin Steve. I was the youngest. Was I scared? I can sat that I still wish I had never been down there, but I was not alone. As I look back we learned many things. Next we put two roofs on the place. One was a flat roof over the car port. Even then my Grandpa probably knew it would be his workshop below. We build for the long-term.
He just moved the bathroom and the kitchen. To me my grandma will be forever staining the ceiling of the kitchen. The length of the kitchen up and down ran dark beams. Across came the light. Off the back a new patio. A mural on the old kitchen wall. When my grandparents moved in they moved in. The mantle perhaps the most important thing on the Isle of Man, important to every part of my family.. They were artistic and they used their art to teach.
People find it difficult to see the wealth at hand with bills due. That cathedral they built of our family was quickly sold after they both were gone. We visited ten years which to me felt like 100. Nothing built today was too hard to build. None of their children ever lived there. I lived there. My Grandparents understood having nothing. They were ready for it again. Stayed three months without going to a store. Talking about not having my parents could not imagine. So optimistic they thought ducking and covering might just be enough to win.
In Pennsylvania the most important place is the kitchen table at 3 a.m. - the conversation begun much earlier.
The Second Problem
When you reach a certain age you find yourself watching for certain people. Imagining seeing them. Some people you know you will never see. Some people you believe you will never see. When my Dad died just 7 years older than me there was just one thing I came to realize: I lived on a new planet. This fact was very clear to me. Here 23 years later I like to see people who knew him.
A couple faces will return to you if you wait long enough. It is like what I learned on the Euro Rail: if you wait long enough someone will fall down in front of you. These imagined worlds are problem but I also find them motivation. For those gone I owe something. For those who I would most like to see, they are essentially who I am.
A country of individuals create these stories only made possible leaving these old communities. Down from the hills they drove these cars with great expectations to arrive. She had never been anywhere. Sixty years later telling her story that she could not believe. She looked telling how you would look if I could tell you. Not a very complicated story, but one we might call deep time. Not geological but generational. This smile of satisfaction.
In a modern world you have to construct places for purpose. She left one planet she knew very well for one she had never imagined. Trial and error. Most stories are lost than told. This one something in-between. Fermenting. Created an entirely new identity.
The Third Problem
Numbers are something magical. You can always count on them. The people we count on. The ancients had an easy way to tackle this problem: there were less of them. In these bands we had strength or we died. It only mattered who you were sitting next to. We love reality tv because we all recognize ourselves in bands.
For millions of years these bands crossed the uncrossable. We are not going back because we do not have the strength. Things we call disorders found uses then. Our first goddesses extracted the fat right from the marrow and had no trouble keeping warm.
In Serbia people can make extra money going in the woods to find mushrooms. Every so often there is this bumper crop. Would sound like good news if you were not in Serbia. They tend to do thing backwards rather often. When I point this out they have a simple answer: You don't understand you are not from here. I smile as we stand along the Naisus river.
So how is a bumper crop bad news for Serbia? So many out there easy to find of all varieties. Any one could find them. So the price falls for the boots on the ground. You need to collect more to make the same money. The casual gig workers showed up less that year. Some of the most experienced simply took the year off.
I had never seen my mother in-law happier. I lost count of how many types there were. I only really remember a few things. How they were drying everywhere. Was volume too. We were going to be eating these all year. As one process started for the long term there was also some celebratory feasting to also be prepared. The most successful hunt I ever saw.
The we had lunch. That is the main meal in Serbia. 7 types of mushrooms cooked 7 different ways. I could not really keep all the combinations straight. One in the style of a schnitzel. There are about 7 meals i really remember in my life. The square footage of the kitchen not much bigger than the table.
I think it was one she remembers. Only person I ever saw happier was her mother the first time in the Ocean.
The Fourth Problem
4 was my first number at second base. I am an infielder and try to keep everything in front of me. Mjok would come to see me every week. He was the best guy. He never seemed lost, but everyone looked right past him. He had arrived with the other boys from Sudan before my time. I started getting jobs for refugees in 2004. He .actually had a pretty good job washing dishes at the hotel intercontinental, but it wasn't enough for him.
The employment specialist before me was from Bosnia. Working in refugee resettlement it was interesting to see how many Bosnians worked in the network. Bosnians know a few words in every language. I like to do case notes. He didn't. He thought it was better for some people to not work. Thing about refugee resettlement in America is employment, employment, employment. Nothing will determine your refugee families future better than the number of people working in your family.
There were some Meskhetian Turks that had four people in the house at work. The men all arrived in leather jackets. They liked to stand outside which none of their neighbors could understand.
Majok had been around years now working in Cleveland. The intercontinental hotel was one of the few employers I inherited. Jackie was something. If you could speak some English she would give you a chance. The Liberians and Sudanese spoke very well. Majok would walk from one side of Cleveland to the other. He was the only person I ever knew who would walk across Cleveland on the regular. We had arrival notices posted in our office. He would always take notice and arrive to greet them.
He would always make it back to my office. A wall of windows my light never on. I will tell you if you are going to do refugee workshops natural light is the way to go. Here was the thing about Majok. He was a polio survivor. I would describe his gate, but my words fail what I saw. The pace across town. Twisted in ways. A smile, Well if you know the lost boy perhaps not that extraordinary. Bigger in all kinds of ways.
I don't know how long it had been, but we filled out applications all the time. He worked 35 hours and wanted more. Years of documented hard work. When they saw Majok no one believed it. No one gave him a chance. A Jackie can make all the difference. He also liked to dance. He went everywhere there was to go. He danced into many nights.
His story has never been told the ending. There is a tree on the east side of Cleveland a community planted in his memory. I know there are people out there who know what happened. If you saw him you would never forgot. He danced into the night. Shot down in the streets of Cleveland. He never got that second job. He never stopped smiling.
The Fifth Problem
Small things are not large. No matter how much we want them to be. When I arrived in 1995 I was the seventh employee. When I left there were over 100. The United Methodist Committee on Relief never implemented a million dollar project before Bosnia. There was a long history. We were breaking new ground. What attracted those dollars was what 10 people could do. The assumption was 100 would do even better. If that was true every team would win the Super Bowl.
When you are ten you get to know each other pretty well. When there is work to be done you do. When there is no work to be done you don't do it. We did whatever people would give us money to do. Being there was our sales pitch. For a big grant in an emergency there are not that many able to implement, When new groups arrived to help they would usually attract funding. We made ourselves vital to everything we could. Marc the fifth employee could get almost anything across any border in his truck.
You had to be willing to do certain things. When we hit our first big payroll me and Gordon number three traveled overland with $275000 DEM cash. Part of the way escorted by British tanks. I was 24. I did all that I could to be there every minute that I was there. It takes a certain type of person often to build things in this world. We can describe all the terrible problems of the world, but certain people drive right through it. It most case they are driven.
News people would sometimes pass through and stay at the house. As few of us as there where the ex pat community was large at the Tropicana in Zenica. I remember two coming through taking pictures of children and getting their stories. I mostly worked with children. I can see their faces now and I think they may have been right. Our leader tended to show people who he was. They said we weren't healthy. I mean fair enough. No one is healthy in a war zone. But what they were doing I told them was cheap art. Still waiting for their response. The story got back quickly to the boss.
He assumed I was defending him. I told him I would write this story. It is a sad one. He lost his way. In every human story there is drama. We were bringing in new people. I already had a boss who I would still work with given a choice. She was adopted, At the time I didn't know how much that meant. She found a paper in the attic in her teens. Imagine that. She was from the Balkans. Learned her family tongue and came to help. She didn't want anymore surprises.
She walked in on my other boss in the arms of all our bosses. I think now she found herself back in the attic. We could not process this. It didn't really have anything to do with me. It had everything to do with me. Is it ok for the person who created something to destroy it? A 100 new employees came. 10 times more complex. 100 times less useful. Grants that help 10 people or 10,000 people often look the same on paper. We were the largest reconstruction program. They made Marc a monitor.
He monitored the program all right. The woman he loved was in charge. She was number 2. I loved her too, but that was not the job for her. She was dating his best friend. She did not know that you needed sand and gravel to make cement. Everything arrived to rebuild a portion of a house, but there was no sand and gravel. Was UNHCR suddenly stingy? No, someone had forgot. I have a video of Bosnian making sand with screens in front of their house. I think this story here is the only evidence of what they were doing.
The Sixth Problem
Betrayal is something you have to define. Lived experience. People are not numbers. Hand crafted. A teaching problem.
I worked getting refugees jobs in Cleveland ten year. There was one boss that was not like the others. The first jobs I had were in kitchens so I knew something of how commercial kitchens work. The applications were lost under his desk calendar. He called me a couple months after I sent the first application. Richard was the Head Chef of the Skate Club of Cleveland.
I just so happened to have one of my best potential employees up for the job: Abdiwahab. He was a guy that made everyone around him feel better about life. He was fun as much as he could be. He would bring in two guys named Mohamed Mohamed to work with him and neither spoke English. One was very large guy. One was very little. You would be surprised by the number of people name Mohamed Mohamed in this world.
So I started with my best client and the last one I took was my most challenging. For years I thought she was illiterate turns out she didn't want to sign anything and had always used her X. She was not the easiest person to work with, but she could work hard and also fit into his kitchen. That was just before his end there.
Abdiwahab and I took the grand tour of the club that first time there. What he spent his time talking about was America and what an opportunity if you were willing to work. He had gone through a stack of fifty application before he got to ours. He could not hire with criminal records or failed drug tests. Fifty and counting for one dishwasher position. I think the second he saw Abdiwahab he knew he would hire him.
I also felt confident what was ahead for my client. This was a chef and if he could be taught and could work he would learn it all. I didn't have to see Richard much over the years. I had given him my best liaison. Any issues that came up were solved before they got to me. At this point Abdiwahab was in charge of hiring. there. I asked him only for the last person I got hired there. Aretha - this force of nature.
So why is this story here? So far so good. Why are you here? How good has it been so far? So what happened to make this a story is one of those economic bubbles burst. Was it the tech bubble? Wasn't the housing bubble then yet. The wealthy club members were members of three or more clubs. The Skate Club membership gets left first. One thing that has been very true about the welathy of the modern era: they love lawns.
As logical as members being members of less clubs. The management thought they could save money by reducing hours of staff. They were coming for refugee nickel and dimes. They tried to go around the Chef. True to what he was creating, he resigned his position. If he was no longer in control of his staff then it was no longer his job. Management was shocked. Abdiwahab was shocked. I wasn't shocked. People show you who they are.
The members were confused. The management asked him to have a going away party. He refused and walked out the door. His priorities I recognized. he re-invented himself as in charge of a large farmer's market that he was going to make his own. We had one meeting out there and connected. He was like no other, but of a type you would hope exists. Hard to believe your eyes.
If you know anything about the refugee network then you know that it has been decimated several times in the last decade. There was a time I worked national trainings and saw the strengths and weaknesses of the network. I learned that people often do not track what they do not want to know. Abdiwahab was Somali Bantu and part of a new challenging population at the time. I actually had pretty good success with both men and women.
Each office reported the progress of their clients to Washington. I submitted the ones from Cleveland. They knew who was working and who wasn't. I asked how our percentage of Bantu women working compared to the national average. They didn't track that number. Being a refugee in any other western country was less challenging. Easy to explain insurance in Canada: you have insurance.
The Seventh Problem
Wealth. The problem of words. Using words to express something doesn't have to make it important. I like to talk about everything. Not that I talk about one thing so much, but talk so much about everything. I will often ask you if you heard this story. If you are really important to me.
One thing you will notice about wealth is it is all about family. Generations build the most wealth. You don't really need family here unless you want to build something beyond you. Like betrayal, family you must define for yourself. In the Balkans often it is the people living below you. The youngest generation the newest story on the house.
They live in fear because there are so few of them. We live in fear because there are so many of us. Poverty's oppression brings other riches. Trauma also the generations build. My family is very wealthy. You can throw me where you will. As a manx man you will find me standing still.
I traveled to the Isle of Man and understood full well why they left. Lucky for me. I am other things as well. More than I know. But I know most of my grandparents. On my mother's side, single mother for a time a Rosie Riveting: Lovely Reta, Reta Mae.
On dad's side, Grandpa also a mine sweeper in South America. Think maybe his second job. He returned to Cleveland had two boys and worked till retirement at National ACME. If you don't know their history that name may seem funny to you. He was a self-taught engineer. He worked his way to lead the experimental division. Unlike everyone else in the company he worked both sides. In the company you were either a manager or engineer, He was both.
He helped developed pneumatic system that are still essentially used on every factory on the planet. The patents his work created I am sure still generate money for someone. My grandfather had his riches stored in heaven. The world came to him and he choose to do something else. If there are 1000 people who created the modern world, William F Morgan would be there.
I like to imagine that he is who the coyote called for all those crazy machines. Which all worked as designed. He was the head of ACME experimental division. If there was failures it usually involved the client. The coyote never said the goal was to catch a road runner. He would have been sold a different machine that would do that job. Customer isn't always right.
He liked to share his faith at work. He once remarked that he had a wonderful opportunity with all the salesmen. They were all men back then. They sound learned he was also selling something.
Granny was the matriarch and the driver. She was my connection to the Isle of Man. In many ways I feel I knew her best when she was alive. Grandpa I have gotten to know better through some writings of his I found. He believed men needed a stern hand. I could tell it was an act cause the girls got different treatment. I can't argue with his priorities. Bill Gates never looked like a happy person to me.
Granny's mom was born here, but her mom's sister was born on the isle of man. They were the latest arrival of my family to America. In Europe we were in each army, then seems a few at least on each boat to America. Us Celts were coming from everywhere. Grandpa had some family in French Canada who I imagine came from Gaul a very old family. His line I probably know the least.
Granny was the hostess and things went her way. I lived a bit in fear of breaking any dishes in her set. In the end most would be broken after she was gone. From a set of 12 coffee cups I last counted 1. I lived rather happily for years with a chip here and there. I remember when she left. She had outlived both her sons and her husband. She had outlived her ability to be hostess. This was most difficult for her and in the end what killed her. She didn't want to do anything.
Now why she was where she was in the end was another story, but in that room she said she had nothing to do. Immediately behind me was a larger than life schedule the all the daily activities. My Granny was disciplined. They did what they wanted their entire lives. Never rich but wealthy enough to make life look easy. Their boys would borrow money from them most of their lives. Not really boomers born during the war, proto boomers.
I think that is why I felt I understood my Granny. She also loved baseball. Watched the team as if they were also her grandsons. There was a generation between us and we looked at that one between us in similar ways. I never argued that she was perfect, but she was a perfect Granny. She once told me she thought I was the one getting everyone to be against her. In the kitchen that would later be mine. I remember it now as funny. Then it was a shock. Everyone was upset with her behavior. I was the only one telling everybody that she is not long for this world. The negativity seemed so pointless.
She had earned whatever she got. She shared abundance with all of us. She outlived her family. One of the last thing she told me was to have more than two kids. In the end she said her family was visiting her. I never met my her mom but I have heard many stories . Granny asked me why they were being mean to her. I told her to ask them and she agreed that was a sensible course of action. I never got to find out if she got her answer. I suspect now that they were trying to get her out of bed.
We have rested on our laurels since the end of world war II as a family and a nation.
The Eighth Problem
We are not taught everything. As a young mathematician i never liked the number 8. I think I must have been too young to worry why. I have no idea. I would count the 7s and 8s on my math work and the best way I can describe it is I wished there would be more 7s. Something similar to wanting the Browns to win the Superbowl. Life goes on in all cases. I took notice of my own things.
SCATTERED LIKE LOST WORDS
Sometimes I forget. Sometimes I don’t remember. Sometimes I have no idea. How was it that I lived that way? I left the last time alone for Sarajevo March 22, 1999. It seems like I am always going to Bosnia. I have a story to tell you. This indefinable you. I start here, as there is nowhere else. I have no idea what I shall write. Is it my story? Is it there story? Is it their story? This debit I owe. This task I undertake. How to write a dream atop an Athol on? So patient as if it never needed to be done. I remember this night five years ago in Zenica more than I did then alone in a strange and far off land. I had arrived in Bosnia in April and in my three months I hadn’t learned too much language, but I think I got my points across. It was the satellite receiver the head of mission couldn’t figure out anyways that got me started. The month MTV Europe was no longer free and Srebrenica was so ethnically cleansed. The war was almost over or so it had to be after so many years. Sarajevo was still closed and the communal koan of peace, the street car beat, was silent. How could it be imagined, who conceived who knew this Srebrenica to come? It was the only time I spent in Bosnia and understood fully I was not Bosnian. I was not from here. I had arrived to bare witness the end. We were all there from every nation on earth and they for the most part had been no where else. I processed Srebrenica as yet one case in point that the international peace mission, which I was apart jaron, was just what Helen Keller described as the “Tragic Apology for wrong conditions.” I was a volunteer and it was different for me. I had come for a bed. That is my story. They had survived for the end. That is their story, but as I watched their faces on that day five years ago, I didn’t see anyone. Everything could be worse…no one is prepared for that, and so I continue this journey tonight following the path which I have followed to exhaustion. How will it come out of me? It came out of them slowly as I watched the months roll by. So shall this from me. I keep in mind two things, the words of a man my uncle crossed the Atlantic with so long ago:
“Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour; a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”
And that peace finally did arrive and the street cars sing Sarajevo peace today.
The Ninth Problem
People who complain about new math never understood old math. We are born with one number sense and we learn another. Well the idea is that we learn this other. If you don't know anything you still know somethings. 3 can feel like half of 9. There is something preserved. Logarithmic we come into the world.
Yes, strictly speaking, you can raise both sides of the famous equation E=mc2 to the power of 0, and you’d get:
(E)0=(mc2)0⇒1=1(E)^0 = (mc^2)^0
That’s mathematically valid… but you’re also pointing out something deeper: in this move, we’ve stripped the equation of everything that made it profound.
t’s like taking a symphony and compressing it down to the fact that it starts and ends. True—but meaningless without the music.
Raising both sides to the zero power is a lens. It shows how: Equations can be true but trivialized. The form of an equation doesn't always preserve its significance. Mathematical operations are context-sensitive: legal doesn’t mean meaningful. The result 1=1 feels like tautological junk, the act of doing it is philosophically rich.
It asks: What does it mean when the structure is preserved, but the content is emptied?
The Tenth Problem
When I lived on the Balkans the question I got the most was where was it better to live. I used to tell people that each place had the same amount of problems just completely different ones. I would have returned to the Balkans. The novelty perhaps what attracts me. Nothing novel for my children there it seems. But it was something.
The first thing that struck me was everybody had a weekend house. On a regular basis as I drove around the country to some of the most beautiful places I had ever seen, someone I worked with would announce, "I had a weekend house there."
Most then filled with displaced people at best.
We ate with the season. You can pickle anything. The thing about America is independence. Everybody unique inside their own fridge. You don't need anyone here. You should be able to do it all. If you can't that is your fault. You had to have others there. Cousins would share cheese from the country side. In the Balkans the kitchens all had the same things.
In the fall the entire country would step outside and roast peppers at the end of their driveway. This smell comes up from Serbia. They have such a deep relationship with paprika that they used to have something like black lung disease till they bread the seed larger I assume. They solved that problem anyways. I walked down the street and it only seemed interesting to me that everyone was roasting peppers.
The Eleventh Problem
BLACK HOLES ON BLACK WALLS
I. Down to the end
I was in Niš, Yugoslavia when I heard President Clinton address the nation in the wake of Columbine. There was a heightened sense of attention in me as my wife waited our first daughter in the hospital. A father I would become and every source of information was worth the effort to comprehend. Not every would find use in me, but I wasn’t passing anything along.
NATO planes drop cluster bombs and break the sound barrier just to put you off nerve. Clinton tells our children to look for nonviolent conflict resolution as the electricity goes off and ten million people stand around and talk about when the electricity will return and who has a gas stove to cook us coffee.
American pilots fly over Nis our best and brightest. Told to go kill and not to ask too many questions. My daughter leaves the hospital and cluster bombs arrive. A pair of anonymous Americans and not one miss, but the market square as well. There are legs on the news. These well engineered blue canisters still waiting to kill along your path home. You don’t really see body parts on the screen, they consume you. And you move on.
Why couldn’t one pilot refuse? As a son of the American Revolution I guess I took it a little more personal than most. Those born there understood from how far away he had come. Maybe there were women pilots, they didn’t seem to be.
I worked at the center for nonviolent conflict resolution. I had learned a trade 3 years in Bosnia. Clinton is like the white man from South Africa who tells you that nonviolent conflict resolution brought them peace. Only Hollywood has more violence than Africa. When a bully is perceived as rational: wrong causes are attributed. Diversity and struggle down to the end.
II. Should the state provide
The world is full of fissures and creases…the jet as it was such a natural design. There is no contradiction. Are women equal Socrates? I sit in my junior level class and listen to a brief overview of justice. Hamurabi through Moses to Plato down through Muhammad past St. Augustine least we forget Jerome. The man is hot and dry, the women is cold and wet. So was theirs to reason.
Every day the lottery we have each played: to be born to have or born to have not. Born to search or born to receive. I such came to breath in Euclid, Ohio. Born male to work for my dollar; Two years later my sister to work for her seventy-five cents. There is no contradiction…everyone is wrong in a way that creates your illusions. Someone once told me, in Amsterdam, you just contradicted every philosopher. Had anyone else my concern?
There was no theory of my life. I speak to you much later. In my junior level class where we each wait to earn our dollar…the women seem unconcerned with their seventy-five cents. Why does it bother me?
There is one thing. That first worldview I held. Not the one I remember, but what they said of me. The rest of my life was a process of unlearning what my soul clearly told me. Then I read the story in the census 2000: For every male dollar earned the female worker can expect seventy-five cents. On average, you say, things are much better for women. I only ask: What was it that needed to be fixed and how was everything so and still broken?
You live history and learn History…if nothing understand this; you will find no fear speaking what it is you have come to believe. For to any of their theories of everything you are relevant. The state to assure this fact as right would find peace in the course of affairs. It is Star-Trek science with ancient social structures. Forty years forward the contradiction revealed; it was ignorance and the generations so surreal.
III. The most natural of thing
Perhaps there are different rules at different times. Perhaps children cannot be charged as adults. What ever your point…there are more topics than your words when you understand that life is taking you and precious time you still have.
I had lost you my audience. Who it is I am writing to. Words cross the abyss. Much is farther than we know. We here upon our island of this sun. Much has been and resolved with what we have imagined. A keystroke from revolution so secure in our form.
There’s a time when the sun rides on the back of the waves
There’s a time when the sun builds its island in the sun
There’s a time when the ocean is all that you see
It’s how she left me standing that I could see
The Twelfth Problem
We often think we know when something is over. This is understandable evolving on a sphere. The road goes on forever. I assumed there must be an end. If you build something you don't build forever. No one builds forever, but we do. When I tell my students they need to feel accomplished they know what I am saying.
We used to feel accomplished. This is what life is about. Never ending, but always continuing. That is the only rule of life. If it doesn't continue it is not life. In bands. The ones who really love you. Walk up and down. And when you have given your all you find there is more.
The Thirteenth Problem
The baker's dozen emerged from terror, not generosity - medieval bakers faced brutal penalties for short-weighting bread, sometimes losing hands or worse, so they threw in an extra loaf as insurance against punishment. This thirteenth piece wasn't kindness but survival, a buffer against the gap between what we think we've measured and what we've actually delivered. It's the same impulse that makes us over-explain, hedge our bets, add safety margins to everything we build. The baker knew that flour settles, scales lie, and human judgment fails, so he built forgiveness into the transaction itself. Problem 13 exists because completing the dozen isn't enough - there's always something more that needs saying, some essential overflow that formal structures can't contain. It's the extra loaf we throw in not because anyone asked for it, but because we can't risk the punishment of coming up short on what matters most.
THE GIRL OVER THE RIVER DRINA
You can't change the Balkans. It's plastic that changes. What humans make changes. What God makes lives. Culture is always stable politics never were. Lying about culture by not talking about what was done is what America was based upon aside from a few Nobel ideals. Working as a volunteer here for two years she asked me if I wanted to go back to America. Of course I do. No one is at home there. I can live in my family, but we make no communities together in policies of division. I've found the Balkans home. Go Home. Don't listen understand. These ramblings I must put on paper for this community grows tired of hearing things it knows. In the Balkans they all know why they can't and growing tired and soon they must. I say to NATO and to the Humanitarian movement...come to the table. And hear a short story about eight people who had nothing to do but live together seven days and share an understanding that never needed words but here they are.
The west has technology and lacks community
The east has lost its technology, but never community
Who has the greater challenge to overcome??
Sarajevo without reasons and some leaping in the night that was there, but another story. Sunday eight am a walk in the snow a taxi drive my second in two years. The bus station. To get on a bus Bosnian people must have food. You don't buy it along the way you bring and run out. Edin and I as volunteers in the Balkans where going because someone asked us to a seminar in Slovenija. Edo had always been a volunteer in the Balkans I only started, but for two years. Getting on the bus for Ljubiana I thought I had a story to tell. I had lived in Zenica had loved had learned, but all I had was a small understanding to be open and a large need to put importance on things that were not. We rode to Zenica this brown in my eye. I was traveling all the places I had known to Travnik. The conversation around me never stops. At first I was identified as a Slovenian heading home. I left this misunderstanding and only listened and watched those around. To my left a Croatian who knew Bosnia home. To the right behind two from Sarajevo that knew Germany better, were home with Bosnia. Behind a wrestling fan young not in school for four years, but had been all around lost in a conversation with the Balkans. Ten hours to Bihać, three for ten kilometers. Snow on the Srbska republik nothing moves there. They never stopped talking the war, the price of Cevap CiCi in Busovaci, all the stories flowing. When I first came here I only heard the rhythm of language. It all sounded important. In my English rhythm was only found in importance. Now understanding there was more rhythm in nothing in life. A year ago I worked very hard to understand. For annoyance and enjoyment I worked very hard. Here it began to roll. In Bihac I was identified and the questions came not looking for answers. Why did you come to Bosnia? Why didn't America stop this war? I came to Bosnia for a bed to sleep in. A place where the question was always why never what. That was the reason I stayed. Bosnians were not supposed to survive. America had sold them to a new world order incomplete. Strength of presence was stability. We had won the cold war by being colder and lasting longer standing on our lines. We crossed the border it was nice to see. Crossing in Croatian land there was always blue policemen. The first international Bosnian border I had reached that was green. Sixteen hours and Ljubiana. I watched their eyes head down the road as us eight from Bosnia stood in the streets at midnight. A kombi bus for us three more hours. Martin Slovene greeted us as we continued on. I sat with Slavica sweetly and spoke in English everything I knew about in English that I do. "Do you speak Bosnian?"
"1 do, but I can't right now."
"1 don't like to speak English," I didn't know what she meant. I knew she understood English. We stopped for fuel. And we bought things they had in Bosnia only with new packages and together as a group for the first time. I knew Dorthee or we had met and Edin, we all knew at least another, but this was the first time we all met.
The garbage can had a smilee face, "Everything's happy in Slovenija." It looked a lot like America only cleaner. We in a circle and then go. Zlatko from Banovici. Slaven from Tuzla. Ameldin from Gorazde. Dennis from Cleveland. Edin from Gomji Vakuf. Sanela from Tuzla. Dorthee from Switzerland. We arrived in two rooms in the mountains. A better hotel than I had ever stayed in. Better then they had in Bosnia. Three in the morning in two rooms. Sarajevo Sunday 8am. Our rooms Monday 3am. We had arrived and talked about our work. We had the same ideas. We talked about Srebrenica we had the same feelings. The five of us and a bottle of Stock 1884. There were four beds and conversation in rhythm. And then a five am boom. We were all asleep. We were all home. And the morning 9am. We were together with the energy that comes from being together. Around one table all others were certain that we had been together 100 years. I did not know that then, but I find it hard to express closed eyes alone. Seminar and randomness. One two three four. When we counted it was easy to see. There’s a natural rhythm broken by closed eyes. Most sang out with purpose or only chance. Some refused and they were of no interest to me and we finished a day of randomness. Most thought the day was over. There was a schedule of enjoyment and there was none for Monday, but a guitar and time to be together. Martin and Usor went for Stock 1884 and some beer. There was no place to stay prepared, we all searched and many who had expected an end joined in. On the second floor lobby and the couches gathered near. Bosnians the guitar and the Balkans.
Seven more days drained all of us. We worked every day. The last day everyone spoke like old friends. We eight barely moved. The bus ride from Sarajevo was longer than the time we spent sleeping that week. We all prepared to leave returning to seven republics. The Serbians left at 4:30 am. They had places to go. Five of the republics had plans. Us eight from Bosnia had just realized we needed a way back home. This came as no surprise and with great delight to the other republics. There is a Bosnian identity. We headed in the right direction. Bus to Ljubijana. We clustered in the station still apart from the whole. What Edo described as the modern jail. Train to Zagreb. We’d figure out something from there. Reminded me of those Andric Bosnians arriving to take the train to Sarajevo from Vise Grad. They arrived when they could and assumed there would be a train leaving at sometime. Urbanization taught many the schedules, but in Bosnia sometimes it is just important that you are going in the right direction. Bosnia put me in the right direction.